Our conferences series started in Liverpool In 1983, followed by Boston at MIT (USA, 1998), and again in Liverpool (1993). Afterwards, a series of four ICILLS has been organized in Florianopolis (Brazil, 2005), Trondheim (Norway, 2008), Valenciennes (France, 2011), and Cape Town (South Africa, 2014). The conference becomes ICILSM in 2016 at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. The coming event (ICILSM 2018) in Xi’an will serve as a forum to exchange and disseminate the ideas and strengthen the link between us. Colleagues from both academia and industry are expected to contribute to the success of our conference.